Brands are frequently assigned with spurring this engagement using their audiences on each social networking they're participating in, but frequently comments on the brand's YouTube funnel remain un-answered.

Amit Agarwal has a scoop on the next upcoming version of the YouTube video player. He writes:

"The next version of YouTube video player will have one very useful feature – you can hover your mouse to any point in the video, without actually moving the playhead, and the YouTube player will show you an image thumbnail of the video frame at the position.

Thus you can easily get a visual gist of the whole video while the clip is still buffering.

I recorded a screencast video and that should give you a better idea of this new feature."

Google has officially revealed its interactive video-discovery tool ‘YouTube Slam’ that arbitrarily spits out two videos at a time for one-on-one battles. In this public voting is enabled which determines the winner out of the two videos.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is getting ready to launch as many as a dozen TV-like channels with scheduled content to lure viewers away from their TV screens. It is said to have been shopping the ideas around US media firms for several months. It is said to have cut a range of content deals and is paying “from a few hundred thousand dollars to several million to content creators to create and curate videos for a channel”.There is no word on what these channels might be, but not hard to guess. YouTube already has a range of categories for some of the TV shows it features including entertainment, comedy, drama food, news and travel where visitors can watch clips or whole episodes. Some of this content such as Five Neighbours is brand new programming while other stuff like Big Brother series 1 is archive material. Until now this has not been scheduled, which is the big change that YouTube is looking to make.

From Google's official announcement: "Today we're excited to launch Hangouts On Air to Google+ users worldwide.

With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to: Broadcast publicly. By checking "Enable Hangouts On Air," you can broadcast your live hangout—from the Google+ stream, to your YouTube channel or your website—to the entire world.

See how many viewers you’ve got. During your broadcast, you can look inside the hangout to see how many people are watching live.

Record and re-share. Once you're off the air, we’ll upload a public recording to your YouTube channel, and to your original Google+ post. This way it's easy to share and discuss your broadcast after it's over.

Of course, launching millions of live stations takes some doing, so we're rolling out Hangouts On Air gradually, over the next few weeks."

Some very good news, that many of us in education been waiting on for quite a while. Having facility to combine video conferencing with broadcasting and publishing will really extend what is possible in collaborative learning spaces for schools, colleges and educational projects around the world.

Robin Good: Vibop is a new YouTube app that allows you to create personalized video clips that can be "embellished" with preset themes, decorative graphics, introductory captions and visual effects.

You can also add your own photos, use existing clips or record a live video in front of your webcam. Video features include the ability to add many different filters, to auto-adjust bad quality-video, brighten dark images and fix shaky camera footage.

At the end of the process your video is automatically uploaded to your own video channel.

"Add an animated intro, a vintage filter, a cartoon look, a silent movie theme, and dozens of other effects. Brighten dark images and fix a shaky camera. Fun, fast, and easy, Vibop will take your memories to the next level!"

I tested vibop and it's a useful tool to make quick enrichments to your videos: It's a pity that the themes are only available for the iphone app and not for the web app integrated in youtube (as expected) .

This piece was written by Ric Williams, COO of Empire Avenue. For those of you who are on Empire Avenue, you will want to hear about this news. For those of you who are not participating in this great social network, the following statistic effects everyone doing business on line.

****These predictions were not made by me, I choose to remain open, no matter what video will play an important role in how users consume content.

****By 2015, 90% of all internet traffic will be video.

****YouTube streams 3 Billion hours of video a month; that is 30 minutes of video for every man, woman and child on the planet. Wow!

Here's the takeaway for all you Empire Avenue fans:

**** It is becoming more difficult to drive people to your content and engage them just because of the sheer amount of content that is now on YouTube.

****Missions have proven incredibly powerful for driving engagement with online content, and this is just one way we’re improving the feature.

**This release will be the first of a few that we will release over the coming weeks with a similar theme, i.e. giving the creator traceability and help them to better engage people in their content.

My comments:

It's important to learn and understand how all these networks fit together, how significant video and Youtube will be in the years to come and what ways you can leverage this to grow and build your audience. It's a learning curve for many but it's worth the time and effort.

In today's marketplace, you have to build community and good will, and Empire Avenue is one of many ways to do it.

Curated by Jan Gordon covering "Content Curation, Social Business and Beyond"

I use Youtube for almost everything. For instance, I use Youtube to see how you do certain exercises, or for even baking things and most importantly watching music videos. Youtube is the longest site I have been using for information or to recap on old information.

"Have you ever tried to download a YouTube clip? If you Google “how to download YouTube videos” then you’re faced with an overwhelming number of links and options that often don’t work or look to be some type of scam.

Enter MPEG Streamclip (made in Italy by Stefano Cinque).

It’s very simple to do. First, find your YouTube clip of choice and copy the URL.

Then go under File: Open URL: - You’ll then get a dialog box where you can paste the YouTube URL:

Open will open the YouTube clip in the MPEG Streamclip window where you can then do just about anything with the clip...

Download is my favorite option and it will do just that: download the YouTube clip to your hard drive in the format you want...

Fast and easy. If you notice there’s even a radio button for HD. Leave that checked and you’ll get an HD version of the clip if it is available."

Sharing your scoops to your social media accounts is a must to distribute your curated content. Not only will it drive traffic and leads through your content, but it will help show your expertise with your followers.

Integrating your curated content to your website or blog will allow you to increase your website visitors’ engagement, boost SEO and acquire new visitors. By redirecting your social media traffic to your website, Scoop.it will also help you generate more qualified traffic and leads from your curation work.

Distributing your curated content through a newsletter is a great way to nurture and engage your email subscribers will developing your traffic and visibility.
Creating engaging newsletters with your curated content is really easy.